Posted on 07/18/2005 9:12:08 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
WASHINGTON — Sen. Joe Lieberman believes the United States needs a bigger Army. But U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejects any contention that the Army, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, is stretched too thin, and argues that staffing issues are being addressed by ongoing transformation efforts.
Nevertheless, Lieberman and other Democrats want to increase the Army's ranks by 80,000 troops to ease the burden Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers have faced since the Iraq war started.
"Our Army is a magnificent force, and the men and women in today's Army are as good as any who have ever worn the uniform," said Lieberman, D-Conn. "The crisis is that there are not enough of them in today's Army."
Democratic lawmakers last week introduced legislation in the Senate and House to boost troop strength; they are also planning a shortcut by offering the proposal as an amendment to the Department of Defense authorization bill when it comes to the Senate floor later this month. The amendment faces an uphill battle given that neither the Pentagon nor the White House supports such an increase in troop strength.
The proposal comes as the military prepares to release a study suggesting the Army is stretched too thin, a claim Rumsfeld strongly denies. Also, the Army conceded recently it's unlikely to meet recruitment goals this fiscal year.
There are now about 499,000 active-duty Army troops and nearly 700,000 National Guard and Army reservists. That total is a third less than the force on hand when the first Gulf War was fought in 1991.
The Democrats want to raise the Army's total force to 582,400 over the next four years.
Increased force requirements since 9-11 have resulted in soldiers facing constant deployments into war zones without rest, training and preparation. The Guard and Reserve have been strained to the breaking point for years, the Democratic lawmakers say.
The Army has fallen 40 percent short of its goal of recruiting about 80,000 new troops for the year. To meet that threshold, the Army will have to exceed recruiting goals by an average of 2,600 in each of the next four months.
The Army has been reorganizing to eventually raise the number of deployable brigades from 33 to 48. The military is also seeking to improve manpower efficiency by having civilians perform noncombat jobs now held by soldiers, officials say.
Charles S. Abell, the Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, testified before a House subcommittee this year that Pentagon transformation initiatives would relieve force stress without increasing numbers.
In 2004, DOD officials converted more than 7,600 military billets to be performed by Pentagon civilians or contractors.
And they plan to convert another 22,000 military billets to civilian slots during this fiscal year and the next, Abell said. Thomas Donnelly, a military analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, said that raising the size of the Army is a costly endeavor. The annual cost to add 80,000 troops would amount to an estimated $9.6 billion.
"The question is, how do these guys intend to pay for it?" Donnelly said. That said, he would favor an even larger increase.
"I think the real requirement is closer to 125,000 troops," he said. "We have seen what the commitment to the Middle East is going to entail over the long haul, even if things go very well in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Donnelly also does not believe the Army should have trouble recruiting additional soldiers.
"It shouldn't," he said. "We had an all-volunteer force 10 years ago of 800,000 soldiers."
Meanwhile, the RAND Corp.'s Arroyo Center, the Army's federally funded research institute, is preparing to release a study finding that the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is straining the Army's capability to fight wars on several fronts simultaneously.
"The challenge the Army faces is profound," said senior RAND analyst Lynn Davis, lead author of the report. "Any approach is fraught with risks and uncertainties, along with significant costs and some possible changes in the Army's long-term goals."
The report — "Stretched Thin: Army Forces for Sustained Operations" — raises questions about the Army's future and the burdens the Pentagon and taxpayers will have to bear to field adequate forces for the country's needs.
It calls into question the Pentagon's ability to carry out its policy of maintaining the capacity to fight two regional wars while providing national security and waging the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
According to the RAND study, the strain on the Army is so great that combat units are spending one of every two years deployed on overseas battlefields, instead of one of every three years, as called for in Army troop deployment guidelines.
Even as the Army was studying the report last week, it announced it is augmenting troop strength in Afghanistan with a battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division that just returned from Iraq in March.
Knight Ridder contributed to this report.
On that point you could not be more wrong. I strongly support the war and believe that it is essential to our eventual success in the war on terror. I also support the President and his Secretary of Defense and thank God that the election of 2000 turned out the way it did. However, my support of the policy and the strategy does not require that I agree with narrow minded decisions that cost soldiers lives.
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